Hockey and everything else

Early for hockey. Sitting on the bench outside mofo rink and this is probably the first time in 2 weeks that i’ve felt like myself. I got up early this morning, did some strength training moves from the self mag website which were way harder than they looked and now i’m here waiting for the 10am scrimmage to start. The last 2 days at work were finally calmer than the shitstorm that’s been happening there lately but it’s not till i’m here, with my hockey stick, getting to run around like a little kid for an hour and a half that i really feel like myself. The great weather is certainly helping. There are finally buds on the trees and i left the house today without a coat. Things are looking up.

Early for hockey. Sitting on the bench outside mofo rink and this is probably the first time in 2 weeks that i’ve felt like myself. I got up early this morning, did some strength training moves from the self mag website which were way harder than they looked and now i’m here waiting for the 10am scrimmage to start. The last 2 days at work were finally calmer than the shitstorm that’s been happening there lately but it’s not till i’m here, with my hockey stick, getting to run around like a little kid for an hour and a half that i really feel like myself. The great weather is certainly helping. There are finally buds on the trees and i left the house today without a coat. Things are looking up.

Feeling beat

This week has been kicking my ass. I basically started back at work hitting the ground running and haven’t stopped since. There’s literally no down time (I’m used to at least alittledown time) and once again I’m finding myself falling into the trap of not exercising in the mornings and coming home and crashing on the couch at night. My last am of exercise was Tuesday. This was definitely an unusual week, but in some ways it’s not. How do I beat this cycle? Once I’m in this cycle everything else seems to fall apart too. Right now our apartment is a mess - and it’s not just the luggage from the ski trip that’s still unpacked - it’s the other stuff that’s bothering me - I cut my hand on a broken porcelain dish that’s been broken and sitting in our bathroom for weeks. Every time I go into the kitchen I pass a broken framed picture. There are boxes that have been sitting outside the bathroom for 4 months now, the couches are covered with clothing, coats, hats. Since I’ve gotten back everything about my new york life has seemed overwhelmingly crappy. A bad experience with the front desk at my normal hair place, work, my apartment, my lifestyle. I know this is just a shitty week, but I’m not seeing things at work getting easier, and I’m feeling panicky about how to actually manage to do my job and have a healthy fulfilling lifestyle.

In an attempt to cheer myself up I bought a Groupon for a yoga place that’s just a block away from me. (I’ve learned that buying fitness groupons for places that are not within that distance just don’t work for me. I never use them). I’ve been feeling like it would be great to get into yoga - to calm myself down, manage stress, and just try a new thing. The place is called Prana Power Yoga on Smith Street. I’m hoping to do my first class over the weekend. Hopefully this is the jumpstart I need.

Ready to come home. There’s definitely sadness that the annual ski trip is over but i really could not have asked for more. 3 feet of powder, amazing home cooked meals at night and some serious quality family time. Some family secrets and stories came out, i had a really great, slightly tearful moment with my dad and some great outdoors bonding time with my husband. But even with all that i feel like i’m ready to come home. Ready for hockey, for my best friend, for my own bed. I’ll be home tonight. And i really can’t wait.

Ready to come home. There’s definitely sadness that the annual ski trip is over but i really could not have asked for more. 3 feet of powder, amazing home cooked meals at night and some serious quality family time. Some family secrets and stories came out, i had a really great, slightly tearful moment with my dad and some great outdoors bonding time with my husband. But even with all that i feel like i’m ready to come home. Ready for hockey, for my best friend, for my own bed. I’ll be home tonight. And i really can’t wait.

This is the view again from our ski lodge - I say view even though you can’t see anything due to the extreme amount of snow. Since Tuesday it’s pretty much been constantly snowing - 6” of fresh powder last night, a foot in the past 48 hours and as much as another foot today. It’s incredible - the feeling of snowboarding through all that powder, there’s really nothing like it. We took a mountain tour with a snowboard instructor that I had taken a lesson with the year before. Through the day he basically told me, “You’re boarding great, i really don’t have anything to tell you to change.” He gave me one pointer though that was great - he showed me how to snowboard down a steep narrow part of the slope. “Lean forward as you’re going down the mountain - it’s going to feel really weird, but lean into your lead foot and then the weight is off your back foot and use that foot like a rudder to swing back and forth and steer you.” He demonstrated then I followed him. “Perfect,” he said. It was such a great feeling - to try something and get it right. I was on the lift with my dad later that day and he was saying how great I had been snowboarding this year. “But why do you think I’m better this year?” I asked him. “I literally have not been snowboarding since our trip last year.” “Confidence,” he said. And I really think he was right. It makes me excited to come back to New York and try to apply that same confidence that I have with snowboarding to hockey. Yes, there are skills that I still need to hone for hockey - as soon as I get back I’m implementing a goal of practicing stick handling every day. Even if it’s just for 5 minutes - I can always find 5 minutes in a day. Even if it’s while I’m watching TV at night - just do it. I’ve got a tournament at the end of this month and I really want to rock it as best as I can. The one thing I’m still not sure about - Brooklyn half marathon. I’ve discovered a love for running, but I’m just not sure if I’m ready to make the time commitment to train for the half marathon with everything else I’m hoping to do in the next few months. When NYRR finally opens up the registration I’ll have basically just a few hours to decide if I’m in or not. I have a feeling I’m going to do it, but I’m not sure if that’s the right decision.

This is the view again from our ski lodge - I say view even though you can’t see anything due to the extreme amount of snow. Since Tuesday it’s pretty much been constantly snowing - 6” of fresh powder last night, a foot in the past 48 hours and as much as another foot today. It’s incredible - the feeling of snowboarding through all that powder, there’s really nothing like it. We took a mountain tour with a snowboard instructor that I had taken a lesson with the year before. Through the day he basically told me, “You’re boarding great, i really don’t have anything to tell you to change.” He gave me one pointer though that was great - he showed me how to snowboard down a steep narrow part of the slope. “Lean forward as you’re going down the mountain - it’s going to feel really weird, but lean into your lead foot and then the weight is off your back foot and use that foot like a rudder to swing back and forth and steer you.” He demonstrated then I followed him. “Perfect,” he said. It was such a great feeling - to try something and get it right. I was on the lift with my dad later that day and he was saying how great I had been snowboarding this year. “But why do you think I’m better this year?” I asked him. “I literally have not been snowboarding since our trip last year.” “Confidence,” he said. And I really think he was right. It makes me excited to come back to New York and try to apply that same confidence that I have with snowboarding to hockey. Yes, there are skills that I still need to hone for hockey - as soon as I get back I’m implementing a goal of practicing stick handling every day. Even if it’s just for 5 minutes - I can always find 5 minutes in a day. Even if it’s while I’m watching TV at night - just do it. I’ve got a tournament at the end of this month and I really want to rock it as best as I can.

The one thing I’m still not sure about - Brooklyn half marathon. I’ve discovered a love for running, but I’m just not sure if I’m ready to make the time commitment to train for the half marathon with everything else I’m hoping to do in the next few months. When NYRR finally opens up the registration I’ll have basically just a few hours to decide if I’m in or not. I have a feeling I’m going to do it, but I’m not sure if that’s the right decision.

Let it snow

Let it snow

The ski trip This is the view from our house up at Powder Mountain - insanely beautiful and a great trip so far. It’s been so great to be outside all day, snowboarding on this beautiful mountain with my family. It’s also prompted a lot of thinking, as these trips always do. My husband and I stopped for lunch early and got a beer yesterday and started talking about how much we love it up here - how much we love mountain towns in general. The whole vibe of this place is so much more relaxed and happy than New York City sometimes feels to us. Especially right now with the way work has been so incredible stressful for me, and with him laid off for 4 months now it’s natural that we’re taking a step back and asking, what are we doing? More specifically, what are we doing wrong here? Why don’t we live in a mountain town and have a dog that happily romps through the snow with us? Why are we paying so much in rent and working so hard to live somewhere that doesn’t look like this? Of course, it’s not quite that simple, but maybe it is. Maybe our lifestyle doesn’t have to be as hard as it feels sometimes. Maybe we could start over somewhere else. And then we think about our friends - we love the friends we’ve made in New York, I love my hockey teams in New York. My mostly girls team won their first game EVER on Sunday. And I wasn’t there. But when I got that call that we had won a game - our last of the season and the first win in 3 years since I started the team, I was so unbelievably happy. It felt incredible to have something that I’ve built pay off like this. So what’s the solution? I really don’t know yet. We’ve decided to open up my husband’s job search a bit (not that we’ve been restricting it to just NYC so far, but to really open ourselves up to other possibilities. The other solution is to change our lifestyle in NYC to try to make that less stressful. A lot of this will be determined by what job my husband ends up getting. For now though, it’s good to know that we’re on the same page about things.

The ski trip

This is the view from our house up at Powder Mountain - insanely beautiful and a great trip so far. It’s been so great to be outside all day, snowboarding on this beautiful mountain with my family. It’s also prompted a lot of thinking, as these trips always do. My husband and I stopped for lunch early and got a beer yesterday and started talking about how much we love it up here - how much we love mountain towns in general. The whole vibe of this place is so much more relaxed and happy than New York City sometimes feels to us. Especially right now with the way work has been so incredible stressful for me, and with him laid off for 4 months now it’s natural that we’re taking a step back and asking, what are we doing? More specifically, what are we doing wrong here? Why don’t we live in a mountain town and have a dog that happily romps through the snow with us? Why are we paying so much in rent and working so hard to live somewhere that doesn’t look like this? Of course, it’s not quite that simple, but maybe it is. Maybe our lifestyle doesn’t have to be as hard as it feels sometimes. Maybe we could start over somewhere else.

And then we think about our friends - we love the friends we’ve made in New York, I love my hockey teams in New York. My mostly girls team won their first game EVER on Sunday. And I wasn’t there. But when I got that call that we had won a game - our last of the season and the first win in 3 years since I started the team, I was so unbelievably happy. It felt incredible to have something that I’ve built pay off like this.

So what’s the solution? I really don’t know yet. We’ve decided to open up my husband’s job search a bit (not that we’ve been restricting it to just NYC so far, but to really open ourselves up to other possibilities. The other solution is to change our lifestyle in NYC to try to make that less stressful. A lot of this will be determined by what job my husband ends up getting. For now though, it’s good to know that we’re on the same page about things.

The cycle of a bad week

This week started off great - I was home on Monday for President’s Day and got to work on my small business, got to play some great hockey and had a really healthy productive day. Tuesday ended with a great 6.5 mile run - the farthest I’ve run (without stopping) yet. Then Wednesday came - I decided to take a rest day since I was really sore from the run and hockey. Work started getting stressful as I realized I was leaving in a few days for the big ski trip. We had our pre-season hockey team meeting at which I definitely drank too much and ended up eating a turkey burger with fries at 10:30pm for dinner. Then Thursday - no exercise again, LOTS of stress and I ended up canceling dinner plans with a friend to just hibernate on my couch and eat leftovers from the fridge. Friday was the ultimate stress day at work - I ended up going into work early, buying breakfast (which I had been so good about not doing all week!), stress eating a twix bar. So what’s the lesson here, that I can only be healthy when work is not stressful or I’m not at work? That’s clearly not going to be a good plan. What I need to do is make exercise and eating right a priority when I’m stressed out. It makes me feel better, it helps with stress and ultimately it’s the only way to move forward. Easier said than done though. For now, I get to head to Utah to go snowboarding in a few hours and spend a week being active, not being stressed at work and eating really well with my family. I freaking cannot wait. Goals for next week? Have an awesome time.

French toast tofu scramble I felt like doing something a little different this morning for breakfast. I wanted something sweet but not the rest of the pumpkin oatmeal and I wanted some protein for sure. I had a vague idea about a tofu scramble, but maybe with cinnamon and nutmeg instead of cayanne pepper and garlic salt and then it hit me - Tofu French Toast! Really simple and really satisfying. Here’s what I did: Press the water out of 1/4 block of tofu  Lightly beat one egg with about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, a pinch of salt, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste Crumble the tofu into the egg mixture and toss to coat. Heat up a non stick pan and add the egg and tofu mixture to the pan, cook, stirring occasionally. Once the eggs begin to cook add about 1 T maple syrup and 1 sliced banana and cook for about 1 minute longer. I added a little extra cinnamon to mine when I was ready to serve. Great french toast taste and the cooked banana really kicks it up a notch. Yum! 

French toast tofu scramble

I felt like doing something a little different this morning for breakfast. I wanted something sweet but not the rest of the pumpkin oatmeal and I wanted some protein for sure. I had a vague idea about a tofu scramble, but maybe with cinnamon and nutmeg instead of cayanne pepper and garlic salt and then it hit me - Tofu French Toast! Really simple and really satisfying. Here’s what I did:

Press the water out of 1/4 block of tofu 

Lightly beat one egg with about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, a pinch of salt, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

Crumble the tofu into the egg mixture and toss to coat.

Heat up a non stick pan and add the egg and tofu mixture to the pan, cook, stirring occasionally.

Once the eggs begin to cook add about 1 T maple syrup and 1 sliced banana and cook for about 1 minute longer.

I added a little extra cinnamon to mine when I was ready to serve. Great french toast taste and the cooked banana really kicks it up a notch. Yum! 


My culinary genius of a husband made these veggie tacos for dinner last night - perfect post-run meal! And he used up a ton of veggies that we had in the fridge - broccoli, swiss chard, tomatoes, leek, cilantro, some leftover guac that we had, the end of a jar of salsa and some of the white yams. Most of all though, they were totally delicious. We both decided there will be many taco nights in our future. And yes, that’s a terrible picture. I have to get less lazy about taking good pics…

My culinary genius of a husband made these veggie tacos for dinner last night - perfect post-run meal! And he used up a ton of veggies that we had in the fridge - broccoli, swiss chard, tomatoes, leek, cilantro, some leftover guac that we had, the end of a jar of salsa and some of the white yams. Most of all though, they were totally delicious. We both decided there will be many taco nights in our future. And yes, that’s a terrible picture. I have to get less lazy about taking good pics…

Perfect pre run snack: Humus and Popchips. Following my husband’s advice I went for a high carb snack before my run - I ate this around 4:15 and met my running buddy around 6:30pm at the NYSC on Park and 59th for our run. The run went good - not great, my legs are pretty stiff from apparently tweaking something during my Jillian Michaels too enthusiastic return session and the intense hockey scrimmage on Monday night, BUT my buddy tricked me into doing 6.5 miles instead of the 6 we had planned. We also did the big hill at the top of the park - the one that totally psyched me out on our first run and you know what? It was totally fine! I did it and ran the extra distance. Feeling pretty good although my legs are really stiff this am. I’m definitely looking at a rest day today. So far feeling pretty good about how this week is shaping up. Also, I’ve been going to bed earlier and naturally waking up a bit earlier and less tired and I’m really enjoying that as well.

Perfect pre run snack: Humus and Popchips.

Following my husband’s advice I went for a high carb snack before my run - I ate this around 4:15 and met my running buddy around 6:30pm at the NYSC on Park and 59th for our run. The run went good - not great, my legs are pretty stiff from apparently tweaking something during my Jillian Michaels too enthusiastic return session and the intense hockey scrimmage on Monday night, BUT my buddy tricked me into doing 6.5 miles instead of the 6 we had planned. We also did the big hill at the top of the park - the one that totally psyched me out on our first run and you know what? It was totally fine! I did it and ran the extra distance. Feeling pretty good although my legs are really stiff this am. I’m definitely looking at a rest day today. So far feeling pretty good about how this week is shaping up. Also, I’ve been going to bed earlier and naturally waking up a bit earlier and less tired and I’m really enjoying that as well.